﻿ The Vineyard Dear Friends: Billy Graham died today—-99 years old. I had the privilege to briefly meet him on three occasions. Two times I simply shook his hand after he preached. The third time I meet him I was a cabin counselor at a camp near his home. I was walking around the camp lake and saw a man fishing in the lake, and I knew that he was not a camp staff. So I politely walked up to him, tapped him on his shoulder and told him that the lake was private and that he should not be fishing there. The man turned around and told me that he had permission from the owner. The man, it...

The Vineyard Dear Friends: The book of acts states that one of the first martyrs, Stephen, had “the face of an angel”, as he was being accused of sedition, blasphemy, etc. That’s always struck me as something quite unique in the Bible. I can’t think of anyone else ever referred to in this manner. Since Donatello first produced “cherubs” in his paintings, we’ve had this whimsical idea that angels are chubby, naked little winged babies, flying around church steeples. But that idea is nowhere found in scripture. Are the angels dazzling… handsome…awesome….striking in appearance? Yes, that’s biblical; but not the renaissance notion of a pretty, soft, feminine or androgynous being. The “face of an angel” that I think...